


The Wanderer

by xathira



Series: Prince of the Unknown [19]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Beast Wirt, Beatrice is stressed, Other, Prince!Wirt AU, Wanderer backstory (maybe), bargains and curses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24306064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xathira/pseuds/xathira
Summary: Beatrice discovers the identity of The Wander of Appleonia.  What she learns challenges her perceptions about her enemy, The Beast.
Series: Prince of the Unknown [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516961
Comments: 50
Kudos: 101





	1. Protecting the Town

**Author's Note:**

> If you're new to this series - welcome! I can't stop you from reading this part first, but you won't know what's going on unless you start at the very beginning.

Beatrice is neither awake nor asleep when Holly returns to her cell. The redhead slumps on her cot with her chin hanging above her chest, breathing in tired little sips of air, her hands limp as dead birds in her lap. She’s trying to see if her fever will burn itself out… she has no more energy to feed it, no more will to fight it, and maybe if she _truly_ gives up she’ll turn into ashes instead of Edelwood. Then Holly can sweep her away and bury her under the apple trees… a tribute to the cryptic Wanderer.

But Beatrice’s shoulder is solid flesh when Holly reaches out to shake her, gently requesting attention. Her blood doesn’t sizzle up to burn Holly’s fingertips like boiling water. 

“You worked yourself into a mess,” the equine girl clucks under her breath. She thinks the fever wearing Beatrice to cinders is the product of Beatrice’s own unquenchable fury, the heat built up by a childish tantrum. “Can’t have you spending the night in jail when you’re like this.”

“Doesn’matter,” Beatrice slurs. The Dark Lantern isn’t with Holly, so she must have left it for The Wanderer. Is there an altar for that thing somewhere? A shrine? Does The Wanderer live in the orchard like The Beast lives in the Unknown, part of every tree and leaf and ripe-red fruit? “I’ll… I’ll always be like this… s-sick…”

Words fall from her like limp bread dough through her fingers, sticking together but too runny to maintain their shape. When Holly slides her shoulder under Beatrice’s armpit, the redhead droops against her, laboring to keep her head from lolling back as they stand together. 

“Wh… where’re-we going…?”

The two girls shuffle out of Beatrice’s cell. The officer on duty tips his hat to Holly, eyeing Beatrice warily, but says nothing to them as they leave and makes no effort to stop them. Beatrice wants to swear at him on her way out. Is this town really so placid, so damn laid-back that a teenager can escort a prisoner from jail on the same night the prisoner is locked up and _nobody_ objects? What is wrong with this place, why did she come here, she should never have allowed herself to get caught in a town she doesn’t know…

Holly is asking her something. Beatrice squints to focus on Holly’s long thoroughbred face, but the amber street lights blur everything into a mix of shapes and shadow.

“Do you need to rest?” Holly questions again, louder. They’re sitting on a streetside bench (when did they sit?) and Holly is touching Beatrice’s face, lifting her chin to inspect her. “Oh, dear, I can’t make you move another step like this… I’ll tell The Wanderer you were too sick, he’ll understand. The Golden Delicious is only one more block away, all right? I can put some broth on for you and we’ll put you right to bed where you _should_ have been—”

“ _Wait._ ” Beatrice flings her hand out to push Holly away and misses completely; she has to bring her arm back and droops on the bench to grit her teeth through a swirl of vertigo. _You’re taking me back to the inn as if I didn’t get dragged to jail kicking and screaming? You’re treating me like a guest after you saw me with the Dark Lantern? What is your GAME?_ There _has_ to be a game, Beatrice thinks deliriously, because if there isn’t a secret core of evilness to this town, to Holly, then Beatrice has stained Appleonia with her temper for _no reason._ “You… you’re taking me’t… to The Wanderer? Why?”

“I’m not taking you anywhere except your bed and a cup of broth if you’re not up for it,” Holly replies firmly. 

“What does… The Wanderer _w-want_ with me?”

“Only to talk.” A comforting hand drapes over Beatrice’s. Even this slight gesture is suffocating. “He isn’t angry with you, so there’s no need to be frightened… but you’re obviously very sick, and it wouldn’t be fair to make you stay up any longer. I’ll tell him you’ll see him tomorrow morning.”

Holly’s concern for Beatrice’s wellbeing is somewhat shaded by the fact Beatrice apparently has no choice in meeting The Wanderer. It’s going to happen whether she wants it to or not.

Beatrice’s hand curls into a fist under Holly’s palm. This spirit wants to talk to Beatrice _that_ badly? Okay. She’ll talk to him. Time to get this over with.

Holly reaches for Beatrice when the feeble girl lurches upright on her own strength, nearly launching herself face-first into the pavement. “Beatrice, please! You’re in no state to…” 

A decidedly _not_ feeble glare shuts the horse-girl up. Beatrice hacks in a most unladylike manner into the crook of her elbow and cracks her neck, feigning more energy than she actually possesses. She will not show The Wanderer weakness or uncertainty. She’s done giving anyone the satisfaction. “Let’s go.”

They walk west through Appleonia, approaching a swath of the orchard opposite to the area where Beatrice had followed the amorous couple. Insects sing in the dark as if Beatrice’s confrontation with the three stallions never occurred. The vessels in her neck punch under her skin. She glances nervously at the unique orchard Edelwood standing guard at the crest of the hill like a compass’s north point, all-seeing, and rubs her knuckles into her stomach to mitigate her nausea. The Wanderer will want answers for the Edelwood’s wound. As gentle as the people of Appleonia are, Beatrice doubts the town’s protector will let her free with mere verbal warning. 

A big, beautifully maintained barn squats between the orchard and the wilderness beyond. In daylight, it would be red as a McIntosh; at night, it is a burgundy speckled with fireflies that hover along its base. Its front door is wide open, spilling the smell of hay and dust. The blackness inside reminds Beatrice of a mouth; she has to pause at the white gate leading up to the barn to catch her breath.

Breath, she realizes, that is not as syrup-thick as before. 

“Beatrice?”

“Fine. I’m fine. Shut up.” Tendons stand out on the back of her hand like guitar strings. The Wanderer must be in that barn. Perhaps he’s curled around the Dark Lantern like a jealous dragon, waiting for her. How is she going to defend herself? _Sorry, sir, I’m bound in servitude to your friend The Beast and that Edelwood you love so much was just super convenient…_ “I don’t know what to say… what to expect. Can I get a hint or something?”

Holly holds her arms out like she’s going to give Beatrice a hug—but quickly decides against it and clasps her hands in front of herself instead. “It won’t be so bad. _Relax._ He wouldn’t hurt a fly. I walked him into the barn over here because he isn’t feeling well either, so honestly… what?”

Beatrice tries to curb the sharp cynicism in her eyes. “The Wanderer is _sick?_ ” A being strong enough to keep The Beast away from Appleonia has weaknesses? That can’t be right.

Holly squeaks in embarrassment at her slip and covers her snout with both hands. “I meant… he’s simply tired, a little worn out from all his w-wandering and so forth.”

Doubt is a cold stone at the back of Beatrice’s mind. She imagines a crooked traveler peddling snake oil to the Appleonians, taking advantage of their gullibility and generosity. The way these horse-folk accept people so easily, it would not shock Beatrice to discover that whoever Holly approves of is only a stranger with dumb luck and great timing… in which case, Beatrice is more _irritated_ that “The Wanderer” requests her presence than she is afraid. 

She isn’t so effortlessly fooled.

The two girls walk to the barn’s entrance. Holly hangs back, dropping her volume to a level appropriate for church. Or a funeral. “He wants to speak to you alone,” she explains meekly.

Beatrice hesitates at the junction between pitch blackness and open air. “Excuse me?”

Holly’s ears droop. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t intrude. I want to respect The Wanderer’s wishes, understand? If I went in with you, it’d be like eavesdropping.”

“No it wouldn’t—you’d literally be part of the conversation!”

“I’ll wait outside,” Holly says, flustered. At Beatrice’s affronted squawk, she flaps her hands and starts walking backward. “I’m not _leaving_ you, all right? I’m… I’m giving you privacy! This shouldn’t take too long, and when you’re done, I’ll make you that broth like I said. And, um, some pie?”

Beatrice does not move. Visions of cleavers and dried blood cut behind her retinas. Here it is—here’s the trap she’s been bracing for, the reveal of Holly’s patient trick. What’ll it be? Pruning shears to the throat? A mob of horse-folk pulling her apart with their bare hands in tribute to their Wanderer? Adrenalin races through her system. She _could_ run, she could use this weird break in her fever to bolt into the forest and leave the lantern behind to be someone else’s problem. This is her chance.

But from the dirt path Holly gives her two thumbs up and a lopsided smile, and Beatrice caves.

“If I die,” the redhead swears, “I’m going to kill you.” 

She faces the darkness of the barn and treads inside… hears the echo of her breathing change as it hits beams and rafters and bales of hay… nothing resolves itself from the muddy black, yet her eyes strain to adjust anyway, searching for a Wanderer-shape amidst the lumps of machinery and straw. _It’s just a barn,_ she tells herself sternly. _Cheese and crackers—have a backbone._

She picks out the Dark Lantern sitting all alone on the dusty floor toward the back of the structure. Its meager meal of oil has brightened it, but only marginally, and its light is no more impressive than that of a candle. Beatrice is within three feet of it before its rusty glow manages to lick the hem of her borrowed skirt.

There’s the lantern… where’s The Wanderer?

Her heartbeat knocks in her eardrums. Beatrice reluctantly calls out to Holly, cringing at how loud she sounds in the mostly enclosed space. “Hey, is The Wanderer invisible? Or really, really tiny?”

No reply. Beatrice bites the inside of her cheek impatiently and cranes her neck to shout at the entrance—

The barn door roars shut on its track before her eyes. The last vestiges of ambient light from the night sky are sliced away by a pane of shadow. Beatrice is blind except for the Dark Lantern’s dull yellow corona… and a bright white beam that slices a horizontal bar across the hay.

“B͉̓l͉ue̟̥͂b͂i̬̽̆ř̪d̓.”

The fine hairs on her arms prickle straight up. Beatrice bolts to the door without turning back to the lantern—to the thing _behind_ the lantern—and hammers at the wooden planks with her fists. “ _HOLLY!_ Holly open this door _right now_ or I swear to god I will MURDER YOU I’m not freaking kidding open it open it NOW!” 

Her fingernails scrabble at any edges she feels but Holly has latched it shut; all Beatrice does is rattle the door and give herself a nasty splinter in the heel of her palm. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Holly whimpers from the other side, squeaking each time Beatrice pounds the door with her knuckles, her knees, her boots. “He told me you’d run away instead of hearing him out so I locked the door on you and I’m _sorry,_ okay, I swear, I’ll let you out after you’ve had a chance to chat—”

“TO HELL WITH THAT!” Beatrice’s rage is a foaming-mouthed dog, a rabid badger, and she’s going to destroy Holly after she destroys the one she’s trapped in here with. She should have figured it out when she was at the gate. There _is_ no Wanderer. All along the benevolent spirit Holly worships is… 

“B̼͓ͯeḁ̥̟͔͐tr̠̼i̗c͈̳ë.”

“ _Beast._ ”

She snarls the title and pushes off from the door, meeting those soulless portals from across the shade and dirt. The Beast lies on a large bed of hay at the farthest wall of the barn, a grander version of what he’d enjoyed at the mill. His crescent-moon eyes lend a vague suggestion to his shape, limning his nest and limbs in muted ivory. His arms are crossed behind his neck to support his head, that gaudy rack of twisted antlers; he crosses his hooves at the ankle, insultingly relaxed. He’s close enough to the Dark Lantern that he could take it before Beatrice makes a move… yet he leaves it on the ground, tantalizing, _daring_ her to try. 

“You were supposed to l͓òôk͊ af̀tͨe͛r̾ th̩i͛s̰…” One hoof motions lazily to the lantern. The Beast speaks at a crawl, tone slack and unbothered, and that pisses Beatrice off more than his “Bluebird” tease. “Was the bu͇r͓dĕn̤ too much for you? Too much re͇s̀p̗o̊nͦṣib̻i̙l̲it̖y̙?” He yawns— _yawns!_ —and the ringed scimitars of his irises vanish as he slow-blinks. “Pitiful Bluebird… couldn’t even handle my soul for twenty-four hours…”

“It was taken from me by force—and I don’t have to justify myself to you!” Had she seriously been dying in that jail cell? Presently Beatrice feels like she could dismantle the barn and then bury The Beast under the rubble. The reckless bravery that spurred her at the cabin bares its fangs once more and she starts stalking toward her arrogant enemy. 

An errant plank left on the floor trips her up three strides in, and The Beast utters a lifeless chuckle. “What’s the rush? Ṃỹ̔ la̰n̟ṭe̻r̍nͬ isn’t going anywhere… at least, not with _you._ ”

“You wanna bet?” Beatrice skids her feet cautiously forward, fighting to keep her focus on The Beast and not on the featureless ground. Why hasn’t he grabbed his soul yet? What is he waiting for? Surely filling the lantern with oil is more urgent than watching her feel her way through the dark! He _can’t_ be so petty, so scheming and cruel to entertain himself with her blundering when he could be _saving_ himself…

Beatrice trods into the lantern’s glow and still The Beast is motionless. She glances between him and the dying flame. She crouches, his starburst gaze never leaving her sight, and stretches her hand toward the handle’s ring. 

Another purr of suppressed laughter. “Why so skittish, Bluebird? You want it or not?”

Beatrice bites her tongue until it hurts. She pulls her hand back and tries to do the same to her clawing anger, except the only emotion she has under the anger is _sorrow,_ so for eight seconds she has to swallow the lump in her throat to make talking possible. During her silence, The Beast simply waits. His pompous self-assurance reminds her that to him, she is nothing. Less than nothing.

“What did you want to talk to me about? What’s so important that you had me brought here in the middle of the night?” She quavers at the start, but fury quickly surges behind her syllables. “Did you want to whine at me for not _feeding you_ enough?” 

The hay rustles as The Beast shrugs or adjusts himself more comfortably. “I wanted to give you an out,” he drawls. “If you’re not up to being my Lantern-Bearer, you can let someone else take over. G̐i̼v̓e͆ ͗ùp͊. Go home. You didn’t know what you were doing when you… _sͬt͖o̓l̯e̱ t̻h̗a͛ť..._ and it’s obvious that you are in over your head. Y͗o͉ṵ al͕̹ẇ̥a͉y̹ṣ̚ h͕̚av̳̆e̐ b͚ẽe̿n̄.”

Only he could make freedom sound like failure. Only The Beast could reduce her valiant efforts to save a boy to a meaningless, stupid mistake. Beatrice had despaired to believe he might've let her escape to punish her somehow… but for him to throw her away? To treat her like trash he can discard at will? 

Beatrice splinters. “Did _you_ know what you were doing when you killed your brother?”

Immediately her muscles tense, her crouched position now one to spring from… but there is no reaction from The Beast. Not a gasp, not a growl, nothing to show that Beatrice’s pointed question pierced him. She already _knew_ there was nothing left of Wirt, why did she try to bait him, what did she _expect…_

“Let that Holly girl have the lantern.” There’s a smirk in his cobweb words. “Sͮh͙e'll͐ t͈a̽k̋e̐ ̇c̍are͎ ̏o͖f͋ ̦m͈e̅.”

A torrent of hatred floods Beatrice’s throat. She shakes and has to place a hand on the dirt floor to steady herself against her visceral response to this needless, pointless cruelty—

_Yes._ It _is_ pointless. Deliberately so, and Beatrice abruptly senses the charade of this whole interaction like the prick of a needle stinging her from the other side of a stitch. The Beast is playing her, toying with her temper on purpose, and he has to have a reason for that because Beatrice can _literally_ see him dying inside the lantern—and instead of taking it for himself, or handing it to Holly as he suggested, he is sprawled in a pile of hay and pulling every trick to torment her.

The Beast is a liar and a murderer. He is not stupid. Beatrice needs to keep up… and if she can’t _expose_ his plot, she can ruin it by not playing along. 

“Maybe I _will_ give Holly the lantern,” she says wonderingly, as if the idea of freedom had not occurred to her. “She seems to just _adore_ you. Would you let her cut down that Edelwood in the orchard everybody’s so obsessed with?”

Intensity radiates from The Beast’s frame without him moving a muscle. “Were y̪o̎u̞ th͓e̮͔ ö́n̥e̚ that struck it?”

“What do you care?” Beatrice tosses back, sitting on her heels but ready to run. “It’s just an Edelwood, right? Wood and oil. Are you this protective of the tree you turned Greg into?”

“T͉h͆a̖t͎ is̘ͯ ̎no̹̲t̾ y͛o͙u͆̇r̠ co̥nc͔er̔n̰.” Frost and… an undercurrent of stress. He didn’t anticipate her turning the conversation. Beatrice was right—he wanted her so mad she couldn’t see straight, so he could point her in the direction he _wanted_ her to go. “Take the lantern and leave Appleonia, or give it to Holly and stay. Do you want your freedom or not, B̈l̤u̜e̗—”

“Are those my only options?” Beatrice interjects. “What about the one where I throw you to the mercy of a whole town?”

A warning rumble thunders from his chest, and Beatrice is equal parts victorious and terrified. “W̬h̗ȧṫ̹ ḁͅre̟ y̻ōuͥ—”

“They don't know, do they? Holly’s _seen_ you and she _still_ talks about 'The Wanderer' as if you're separate things.” Beatrice is shooting in the dark hoping to hit something, or at least give her enough time to figure out a better plan. "That's why you didn't take your lantern yourself, right? You knew you'd give yourself away… and then you'd lose whatever messed up grip you have on this place."

"They won't believe you," The Beast sneers. He brings his arms from behind his head to his sides, as if he wants to sit up but is waiting to see what Beatrice will do. The colors in his eyes spin various shades of yellow.

Spite tugs up the corners of Beatrice's mouth. "They will. I can show them what you really are." 

She snatches the lantern and pulls it to her chest—shielding it with her other arm—and opens the circular window sheltering that accursed fire. The Beast inhales jaggedly. His eyes widen, though his lackadaisical posture does not change.

“This again? You’re threatening to takͨe͈ m̽y̗ p͓l͒a͛c̝e͉? What will that solve?”

It won’t solve anything. It won’t bring Greg back. It might not even break the curse binding Beatrice to the antler-crowned devil. But…

Beatrice brings the open window to her lips. The pitiful flame inside gives off no warmth. “I should have done this at the cabin,” she murmurs, breath stirring the fire. “I will make a better Beast than you.”

She rakes air into her lungs. The Beast rears up on his hay throne and screams _“N̫̥͚ͫ̏O̭̹̓ͮ!!!”_

With a roaring _whoosh_ the barn door rattles open, unlatched by a petrified Holly. She bleats out a single, frightened “Wanderer?” and has to leap out of the way of Beatrice, who jams the lantern’s window closed and barrels at the exit like a war steed. Her legs churn faster when she enters the orchard—paranoid about every tree, every root, every gnarled bough—and she does not slow at the frantic pleas Holly throws at her shoulders. If Beatrice slows down, then The Beast will catch her, and she has to make it to town to warn everyone of The Wanderer’s true loathsome identity.

“THE BEAST IS HERE! THE BEAST IS IN APPLEONIA!”

Beatrice’s bellicose shriek strikes light into the windows of cottages she passes, tapers lit and rudimentary electric lights blinking on as citizens fall out of bed. The earthen path becomes paved with cobblestones under her coursing feet. She blasts the nighttime tranquility with her alarm, her declarations of _“BEAST,”_ and soon bleary-eyed horse-headed people are trailing after her in the streets. Their fearfully mumbled questions and shaken confusion crescendo the farther Beatrice runs.

She’s made it to the central plaza of town with the Dark Lantern held high by the time a huffing, puffing Holly catches up to her. The dappled horse-girl wheezes Beatrice’s name and reaches for the arm suspending the lantern, but Beatrice roughly shakes her off and strides sideways to stretch distance between them.

“ _Beatrice,_ ” Holly pants, leaning forward with her hands on her knees. “Wh… what in _blazes_ are you doing?!” 

“What am _I_ doing? What are YOU doing! You lead The Beast right into your town and set him up with a damn bed like a pet!” 

Agitated murmuring shutters through the present Appleonians like the flap of raven wings. They’re deeply spooked. Holly's ears flick to a fro while she listens, her wounded visage tacked to Beatrice's merciless glare.

"Did she say The Beast? In Appleonia?"

"What is that loon going on about?"

"The Beast can't be here…"

"But the oil-monsters…"

"What's all this racket?"

"The Beast can't be here, it's safe here…"

"But the _oil-monsters…_ "

"You met The _Wanderer,_ " Holly asserts tremulously over the increasing buzz. The revered moniker flutters its rounds among townsfolk in their dressing gowns and poorly tied shoes and staves off the echo of panic Beatrice triggered. "I understand that they might appear similar… yet The Wanderer and The Beast could not be more different. I'd _never_ leave someone alone with that demon!"

Beatrice’s molars grind. “You _locked me in a barn_ with that demon.” 

A piece of Beatrice, so small that it’s a mere whisper inside her, believes that she’s doing this to liberate a town of innocents that don’t know any better. She’ll shatter their delusions to prevent them from making the same mistake she did: trusting a Beast that will break their hearts. Whatever The Beast promised them, whatever bargains he might have made in the past will rot if they haven’t already. They’re in grave danger following a creature that desires to replace their apple trees with Edelwood.

But most of Beatrice, the majority of her spirit, is vengeance. The desire to take The Beast down for what he’s done to Greg, to her, stains any pure intentions behind driving that devil back into the forest like blood on a flag. 

_Selfishness…_

“I will make him admit the truth to you,” Beatrice says fiercely, her voice carrying through the square. “The Beast is in the barn at the western side of the orchard. If we all go right now, we can confront him.”

“He’ll have left after your behavior!” Holly scolds. She’s recovered from her run and stands straight across from Beatrice, hands on her hips. The Appleonians all look to her, point their ears to her, as if she is a lighthouse beaming over the tumultuous waves Beatrice sent crashing into their town. “He’ll have left, and I can’t blame him! Stirring up fear, spurring people out of bed—and for what? Because he _looks_ a little spooky?”

A few horse-headed citizens whicker with laughter. Beatrice scythes her glower over them.

“Have any of you actually _seen_ The Wanderer except for Holly?” she asks the town. Their laughter stops. “What have you been told about his appearance? That his eyes glow? That he’s got branches for antlers? The _Beast_ won’t have gone _anywhere,_ because he knows what will happen if he does.” She jerks the lantern and it clangs on its handle. Given the state of the flame inside, she doubts The Beast would get very far if he _did_ flee. “Come on! You’re all awake anyway—what’re you waiting for?"

Holly is more wily than she seems. While Beatrice addresses the Appleonians, she sneaks imperceptibly nearer and then catapults herself at Beatrice's lifted arm.

Beatrice reacts instantly. She wrenches herself from Holly's grip and jabs her elbow into the other girl so hard that Holly keels onto the cobblestones, barely saving herself from landing directly on her tailbone. Gasps accompany the sound of her hip hitting the street. A pair of good Samaritans run forward to assist the fallen filly, and another pack rushes Beatrice—three of whom are the stallions that dragged her to jail earlier.

“That’s enough of that, stranger,” growls the bay.

“Hold it _right there,_ ” orders a pinto.

They circle her and spread their arms to cut her off from escape, from Holly, and it’s clear from their bitter expressions that their patience evaporated the second Beatrice’s joint made contact with Holly’s stomach. “You’ve overstayed your welcome,” the black stallion with the white blaze states grimly. “No more second chances.”

“I’m trying to _help_ you,” Beatrice screeches, hysteria shuddering through her vocal cords and down her rigid wrists. She hadn’t intended to hurt Holly—her first instinct had been to defend the Dark Lantern, that's all. Imagine what The Beast could _do_ to this place with his full power, and no one to defy him. “Don’t believe me? See him for yourself! Go see your stupid Wanderer!”

“Holly, darling, what’s going on?” 

A concerned voice shoves past the throng of onlookers; from between the shoulders of the stallions boxing her in Beatrice witnesses Mr. and Mrs. Hotchkiss embracing their daughter. The sight of them brushing back Holly’s hair, comforting her, twists Beatrice’s stomach into jealous knots. 

Mr. Hotchkiss glares over Holly’s head at her and positions his child protectively behind him. The hospitality he portrayed at dinner is buried under a scowl. “Do you think it’s _fun,_ causing a riot in our lovely town? Spreading lies and panic? What coven do you work for?”

The stallions surrounding Beatrice freeze and stare at her with renewed horror. Hisses of _witch_ and _Beast_ ripple around the Appleonians.

“I’m _not_ a witch!” Beatrice yelps. Those guarding her flinch, and tears of frustration blur her vision. 

“If you’re not a witch, then why do you hate The Wanderer?” someone demands. 

“You can’t trick us!”

“You won’t turn us on each other!”

They’re not listening—nobody is _listening_ to her! What is wrong with them? Why are they so damn loyal to a liar none of them have ever seen themselves?! 

Beatrice rises to the balls of her feet and aims her desperation at Holly. “You were right about this lantern belonging to The Beast! It's too dangerous for him to get it back—he’ll—he’ll run rampant in the Unknown. Understand? The Wanderer…"

She's going to say "is a sham." She's _going_ to say it, until something hard and sharp-pointed presses at the back of her tongue. Shocked, Beatrice's tongue arches to her soft palate—and the shape of the thing in her mouth has every fiber in her body screaming _TOOTH._ Revulsion curdles her intestines. She spits into her palm. Blood congeals in her veins as she peers at the black speck in her hand.

“What is that?” the bay guard asks tersely. He steps to the side to allow Holly, followed closely by her parents, to glimpse what Beatrice has spat out herself. “A witch trick?”

Holly’s high squeak is stifled behind her tighty shut lips. "An apple seed," she warbles. 

When she says it, another seed digs at Beatrice's throat… and another, a third, rising from lower in her esophagus and pushing up at her uvula. Beatrice coughs up seeds as they come while Holly and the circled stallions watch in dazed awe. Stricken, they shuffle warily away, as if the hex wracking this loud, combative stranger is contagious.

"She harmed a Hotchkiss," one of the horse-men states ominously. Others repeat his words, appalled and disbelieving, and those last syllables slither around the horse-folk like the hiss of many snakes. 

“Serves her right.”

“For shame!”

Beatrice spits out ten more seeds instead of words. She trembles and walks her empty hand up her throat, kneading at her tonsils, and whimpers as several tiny tear-drop shapes prickle her mouth at once. _Another curse._ One to punish her for attacking an individual The Beast favors—or else retribution for threatening the lantern a second time, or for trying to defame The Wanderer, or for not finding oil fast enough. Beatrice’s lungs shrink and her eyes burn and the air is too thin, too watered down, this is her fault, and she has no clue what to do so she reaches out to Holly—pleading, scared—

_it’s obvious that you are in over your head_

Beatrice is the fool for thinking she could win over a town in love with The Beast’s lie.

Holly takes her by her outstretched wrist and pulls her into a hug, despite her parents’ joined gasp. “I forgive you,” the horse-girl blurts. Shocked exclamations besiege her. “I forgive you for pushing me, I bear you no ill will. It’s all right. You were just frightened, weren’t you? The Wanderer took you by surprise, and you were doing your best to warn everyone. Right?”

“I…” One last seed scratches the base of Beatrice’s tongue… and after she spits it out, no more take its place.

“Holly Mae,” Mrs. Hotchkiss says carefully from next to her husband. “Did you take this girl to… to see him?”

Mr. Hotchkiss’s ears are flipping back and forth in agitation. He steps toward Holly as if he wants to pry his daughter away from the lunatic stranger. “We’re not supposed to introduce just _anybody_ to—”

“He asked for her,” Holly assures her father, not letting go of Beatrice. “Her _specifically._ I couldn’t ignore his request…” 

Beatrice’s younger siblings could learn a thing or two about puppy-dog eyes from Holly. 

“A special exception, then,” Mrs. Hotchkiss says mildly. She and many of the townsfolk are clearly impressed, though no less perturbed. “You should have said something to us, dear.”

It hits Beatrice below the diaphragm that Holly’s parents—and the town—are not questioning why a filly escorted a stranger out of jail in the middle of the night, are not challenging her assertions that they went to visit The Wanderer. She hadn’t realized the systemic trust Appleonia has in the Hotchkiss family… in Holly, and her dealings with their elusive town guardian. This kind of cult doesn’t grow overnight. How long had The Beast been insinuating himself into this place as benefactor and protector… and what interest has he invested in the Hotchkisses? What do _they_ get out of the arrangement?

A bargain. An Edelwood. Apple seeds in her throat.

“What shall we do with…” Mr. Hotchkiss struggles with what to call Beatrice. His lips form the beginnings of _guest,_ but he seems equally likely to say “witch” or “maniac.”

“Jail?” suggests the bay Beatrice socked in the face a few hours ago. The majority of Appleonians echo this proposal, as polite and businesslike as though they were deciding where to hold the next luncheon. 

“Not jail,” Holly pipes up, squeezing Beatrice defensively. “F-For a silly little overreaction? Anyone could make the same mistake! Why, just this afternoon she about broke her skull open on a branch!” She points to the contusion below Beatrice’s hairline. “Could you blame her for being a bit addled? I think, if she _apologizes,_ everything will be right as rain.”

“Apologize… to The Wanderer?” clarifies Mr. Hotchkiss. At his daughter’s vigorous nodding, he sighs and leans into the supporting touch of his wife. The townsfolk brighten considerably. Of course: a mere apology could probably fix any transgression here. _Hold hands with The Wanderer—all is forgiven._ “Well. If that’s what it takes to mend any, uh, unpleasantness…”

Holly links arms with Beatrice and forces a smile. “Oh, yes, absolutely. Beatrice is _very_ sorry for waking everybody up unnecessarily, aren’t you Beatrice?”

Beatrice is too frozen in her own cold sweat to refuse. She nods mechanically, her clenched fingers white as ice around the Dark Lantern’s handle. “Sorry. For overreacting. My bad.”

“We’re safe!” Holly calls out cheerfully. “Everything is alright! You can all go home, sorry for the inconvenience!”

The Appleonians nod and huff, tension miraculously diffused. The stallions who’d come for Beatrice grudgingly take their leave—but they _do_ leave, likely marching off to take up their twice-interrupted watch at the orchard Edelwood. A bunch of horse-folk wave to Holly and her parents as they wander back to their homes… mollified and ignorant of the lethal creature at their doorstep. Their parting words have Beatrice’s sweat-damp face flushing scarlet.

“The girl who cried ‘Beast’!”

“Teenagers, always stirring up trouble...”

“If it’d been an _actual_ emergency then…”

“I jumped out of bed for one spooked little girl?”

In a few minutes, her window for her to warn the town closes. Shock renders Beatrice chilled and mute. She distantly registers Holly towing her along and offering a vague promise of returning home before sunrise to placate her mother and father. Mr. and Mrs. Hotchkiss head to the Golden Delicious Inn. It is peaceful in the Appleonia streets. The two girls are traveling, unobstructed, back in the direction of the barn. As if Beatrice hadn’t ruptured a perfectly beautiful night with cries of “Beast.” As if the Dark Lantern she carries is invisible. 

_They won’t believe you._

“Are you really leading me back there to apologize?” Beatrice croaks, when the road is dirt and apples perfume the air. The scuffs of her boots are still slashed into the path where she ran. Holly has interlaced their fingers together and pulls Beatrice like a dog on a leash. “I won’t. I’m not sorry. He’s not—”

“Beatrice,” Holly interjects with manufactured calm. Her eyes are pointed at the craggy line of treetops fencing the orchard; her low tone is measured so evenly that Beatrice can’t glean a single emotion from it—no anger, no sadness, no gloomy resignation. “Does that lantern belong to The Wanderer?”

The inquiry clips Beatrice unexpectedly. She bristles, struggling not to shout. “It’s The Beast’s lantern. You _knew_ that when you took it away. What the hell do you think I’ve been saying? The Wanderer _is_ The Beast—”

“I understand why you went after the Edelwood in the orchard.” Holly smiles with half her mouth at the guilty expression Beatrice tries to hide. “We can’t touch that tree… but there’s an Edelwood outside Appleonia we can use. It isn’t that far. An hour there and back, tops.” 

Five strides. Ten. Fifteen, and Beatrice has collected enough of her frayed wits to ask what’s grating at her chest and digging thorns into her jawbone. She narrows her gaze at Holly, this girl who has apparently accepted the hideous truth and yet has not collapsed in the hopelessness Beatrice feels gnawing at her insides. “Do you care _at all_ that your Wanderer is a monster?”

They pass the barn, its door open to the churr of crickets and sugar-laden breeze. Holly pauses and offers Beatrice a true, mellow smile that irks Beatrice like a twisted arm. “He isn’t,” she says assuredly, and keeps walking.


	2. An Orchard Tale

Cool humidity beds down over the forest. The rainclouds that The Beast brought with him are holding their breath, restless. Every few seconds, heat lightning backlights the sky red-violet and tatter-textured.

Beatrice can’t hear any thunder.

The Dark Lantern’s light sculpts what it touches into amber relief: the unpaved path, which grows less and less distinct as weeds impinge on its winding borders; the ruffled fabric of Beatrice’s and Holly’s quietly shuffling skirts; the close-standing trunks of trees, bark turned lackluster bronze when the girls pass by. Oaks and maples totally obscure the orchard by the time Beatrice realizes neither she nor Holly have anything they can use to hack at the Edelwood they’re supposedly seeking out, and suspicion renews the jitters crawling up the nape of her neck.

“If… if I ask you more questions...” The redhead grips the lantern’s handle until the metal impresses itself into her palm. She’s never been certain of how far her tether to The Beast spans, and the fact no embers are flaring in her marrow has her heart skipping a staccato beat. Perhaps Holly knows her Wanderer is waiting out here to dispose of Beatrice neatly. Perhaps _Beatrice_ is going to be made into the Edelwood that the lantern requires. She almost feels hopeless enough to grow roots, after her failure to convince Appleonia of the danger it’s in. “If I ask you more questions, will you make the seed thing happen again?”

Holly spouts a startled laugh. She let go of Beatrice’s hand when they entered the woods so she could walk slightly ahead, and now she grabs fistfulls of her skirt as she marches. “I didn’t make that happen.”

“Then who did? I… I shoved you, and then…” Beatrice swallows. Her throat is still sore. “Am I cursed?”

Holly’s eyes reflect the maple-gold glow of the lantern when she glances back with a small, reassuring smile. “No. You’re not cursed. That was… just a temporary hiccup. You’ll be okay.”

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

If pushing someone down—not just someone, a _Hotchkiss—_ puts seeds in her mouth, Beatrice does not want to contemplate what would happen if she did something worse. That apprehension stops her from throttling Holly for answers, or knocking the horse-girl out and making a break for it.

“Hmm…” Beatrice pretends to ponder what she wishes to ask, despite the words battering at her teeth. Holly had practically bubbled over with sentiment for The Wanderer at the dinner table; if not for her family suppressing her outspoken zeal, she might have spilled everything, and Beatrice wouldn’t have made an ass of herself hollering through the streets. “What’s with the orchard Edelwood?”

It flies out like a badly thrown punch, before she loses her nerve. Holly’s ears swivel backward and then flatten themselves against her skull, partly disappearing into her mane. It’s clear in her stiff, skittish body language that the equine lass is mulling over how much to tell Beatrice… or _how_ to tell her, since Beatrice reacted so violently to the spirit Holly places all her unquestioning faith in.

“You were going to share the whole story this evening,” Beatrice reminds her, attempting to coax instead of arraign. Thinking it will help, she reluctantly reaches for one of Holly’s hands and applies gentle pressure until the Appleonian stops worrying her skirt with her anxious fingers. “I promise I’ll listen, okay? I won’t make any judgments until you’re finished.”

That last part is as hard to get out as an apple would have been, if Beatrice had hacked up a full fruit rather than seeds. She feels herself scowling… and Holly gratefully squishing her hand back.

A weighted sigh leaves Holly's chest. The path they walk trickles into the underbrush, delineated by the natural bend and weft of plants pushed aside by years of traveling feet. “That Edelwood is my grandmother.”

_”What?!”_

Beatrice promptly traps her idiot tongue between her teeth, inwardly subduing her pulse. She clears her throat and mutters an apology that Holly accepts with another tiny, wilting smile.

“Yeah, she’s my grandmother. Grandma Opal.” Her tone is as casual as if she’s describing a still-living relative. “We were going to visit her this afternoon, when we saw you in the orchard.” 

To chop down any Edelwood is to desecrate a grave, but the fact that the Appleonian Edelwood is Holly’s _family…_ Beatrice’s stomach flips upside down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I never had the opportunity to tell you. It’s all right—”

“No, it isn’t.” To have a reminder of who you lost, and how you lost them? Right in your town? What would Beatrice do if her mother or her father, or one of her siblings, became a terrible tree looming over the mill? It’s unimaginable. Beatrice’s sympathy smolders and she fights to breathe through the lung-crushing fist of rage in her ribs. “When did your… when did she turn into an Edelwood? Why? You said there was a bargain—what does that mean?”

“I’ll explain.” Holly is steadfast and collected, lightly swinging their joined hands. “It’s really okay, though. You’ll understand.”

A short growl grates at Beatrice’s back teeth. If she caught someone taking an axe to Greg’s Edelwood, she’d rip their head right off their shoulders.

Holly waits until her companions breathing isn’t so ragged, until her grip is no longer painfully tight, to speak. In the interim, a chorus of spring peepers belts piccolo music from the braken. Wisteria cloys the air, sanguine as caramel on Beatrice's tongue. No pink-yellow-blue glare disrupts the evening. Beatrice inhales through her nose and exhales through her mouth, and hopes that her shaken expression isn’t too stark in the lantern’s brume.

With a composing breath of her own, Holly begins. “Grandma Opal and I met The Wanderer this winter, after we’d gone looking for food…”

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

The young Beast met the Appleonians late in the winter, when their hopelessness drew his presence like a vulture to roadkill.

This was before he’d been given cloven hooves, and after he’d learned to don his night-black Gravedigger robes. The sapphire in his eyes was bleached to blinding white, an all-encompassing mix of chaotic color that struck the snow and set glittering fire to each crystal flake. He’d buried many souls before stalking his way here, scenting the air and salivating, clutching his chest and wiping moisture from his cheekbones. So much death, calling to him. So much oil to reap. 

Pre-dawn powdered the world in numb pastels—bruise-lavender and bloodless-blue that made the dead-dark woods all the starker. His forlorn song flowed clear and tenor down the hills; it poured like a fog over the skeletal orchard, whose trees were too locked in slumber to greet their master. He would lure out those too weak to resist their doom in the earth and make them _his,_ forever, because the only mercy The Beast is capable of giving is that of sylvan rest. He _craved_ these deaths. He forgot why he ever fought so hard not to do exactly what the Unknown needs its Beast to do.

Alert, hungry, he stalked into the first row of cultivated trunks. Below him, petite houses clustered near the town with smoke floating from their chimneys like pencil sketches. The Beast knew he’d wander by those dim windows late at night to bait the citizens starving inside, crooning for them to surrender with the new moon’s shadow to hide his form, and the emptiness in his breast twinged at the cruelty of it… but a fading soul already in the forest’s grasp distracted him. _Close._ He sensed roots reaching for this individual as if those roots were peeling out of his own flesh, his very veins strangling out any final gasps of air. 

Bootprints that dragged from the woods and up the hill’s crest pointed him toward his prey. Snow silenced his bare feet. The two equine-headed folk did not notice The Beast until the glare of his irises fell directly upon them, too bright and cold to be early rays of sunshine.

A young girl. An old woman. Both dappled-brown, although the grandmother’s mane had gone steely with age. They’d traveled far beyond their home to find food, and the matriarch had no more vitality remaining. Famine had devoured her inside out. The girl wrapped her arms around the elder for warmth and comfort; she wept into the octogenarian's shoulder so that both their winter-frail bodies quaked. 

“Grandma… g-get up, please, you have to get up…”

Roots curled greedily around the old woman’s limbs and locked her where she’d stumbled as she tried to hike over the hill; they thickened and spread with each passing second, invigorated by The Beast’s passionless attention. A few tentative vines lapped at the weary girl’s feet… he could take her too, if he wished. Her terror when she saw him, overshadowing the grandmother, was a beaten thing that froze her as absolutely as the frostbite snapping at her fingertips. She couldn’t fight him. She could not, and would not run, and abandon the elder. Her gaunt face begged for compassion The Beast did not possess.

“Don’t do this,” the girl bawled. The way she hugged her ill-fated loved one made The Beast remember a scene he’d pushed deep, deep down, and the twinge in his chest became a stab. “Leave us alone… l-let us go… we’re almost _home._ I can see my h-house from here, it’s—it’s the little yellow one, j-just down there.” He did not bother looking to where she pointed, her entire emaciated arm trembling with the effort of the gesture. "We're n-not lost… my grandmother will be okay after she rests...”

The Beast ignored her, ignored the terrible stab, and spoke to the old woman. “You will not make it.”

A fact concluded by the Edelwood transforming her sluggish blood to oil while they waited. Yet the wise woman caught the question concealed behind his words, a boyish uncertainty that, to her experienced ears, sounded like a request for permission. She’d shaken her head, dignified. Her words were dust settling. "You wouldn't be here, if it wasn't my time."

The girl wailed as if The Beast had torn out her heart himself.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

“I asked if he would take me instead.” Holly chuckles hollowly, almost as if sharing an embarrassing childhood story. “Grandma gave me this _look,_ oh boy… you’d never imagine a lady on her deathbed could glare at you like that.”

The fist smashing Beatrice’s lungs spasms open and shut. If not for the timing, this could be a tale about the _original_ Beast… but that had been _Wirt_ skulking around a town that worships him today. He’d been here, reaping lives, and then he’d slunk to the mill—and she’d _taken him in_ and fed him and restored his strength. She’d protected a monster that robbed Holly of her grandmother. She’d protected him, stuck up for him, folded him into her life as an honorary family member...

The world tilts directly under her feet and Holly has to grab Beatrice’s arm before she topples into a birch. “That's… _awful,”_ Beatrice pants, because there are no other words she can say. 

“Are you feeling ill again?” Holly asks worriedly. “I confess I forgot how sick you were when I saw how fast you ran out of the barn, but if you have to rest—”

“It… it isn’t that.” Beatrice gasps like a fish thrown onto the shore. She should have left The Beast bleeding in the snow. “I’m not a _baby,_ Holly, jeez. This is...a heavy story, is all.”

“Death can be a heavy subject…” Holly’s firelit countenance is abruptly mortified. “Oh, Beatrice—I didn’t even think… those _boys_ you were looking for…” A sorrowful moan drowns the end of her sentence. “You lost someone too! I’m such a birdbrain, I should have realized this might upset you!”

The Appleonian girl sobs unrestrainedly, like a child. And watching somebody genuinely cry over Greg—and Wirt, her not-quite brothers—has Beatrice suppressing a separate fist flexing in her skull, one determined to wring her tear ducts dry. 

“Can we not make this about me?” the redhead asks hoarsely. “Everyone knows someone who died, boo hoo. We’re talking about you. And The Bea—Wanderer. Your grandma, the orchard Edelwood. Focus.”

Thankfully, Holly acquiesces, breaths shuddering back to a more stable rhythm. She draws her sleeve over her eyes and sniffles mightily. “You’re sure you w-want to hear the rest? We don’t h-have to talk… we can fuel the lantern and g-get back to The Wanderer.”

Weird—that’s what Beatrice wants to tell Holly. If she’d known this tale was going to be so _personal_ for the horse-girl, she might’ve hesitated to learn the orchard Edelwood’s identity. “I want to talk. Ah… after we take care of this.” 

But she hears the friable quality of her own syllables as she says it, and swivels the lantern from her so she won’t feel so exposed. 

The badly neglected path tangles entirely into ferns and ivy. The pair continue forward anyway, not making eye contact, and arrive at the anonymous Edelwood after a minute or two of clumsy reticence. Beatrice strides ahead of Holly and approaches first.

The rest of the woods seems to lean away from the ominous tree, as if it might infect the healthy root system sown around its brim. Its aura bleeds _disease,_ an insidious pressure that throbs red in Beatrice's sinuses behind her swollen eyes. A face etched with unending agony howls without voice toward the apex of the gnarled trunk, its mouth an empty pit and its eyes bugging canker-knots that ooze filthy sap. The branches above Beatrice’s head contort themselves like broken limbs. There’s a smell that Beatrice can barely detect, smothered beneath nighttime blooms and the cologne of earth… something coppery and sharp that belongs in a slaughterhouse.

“Who was this?” Beatrice grunts, toeing the invisible line between the Edelwood’s space and that of the surrounding wilderness. The lantern’s light flickers and jumps behind its glass window, as if the flame within is trying to leap at all that rotten tinder. 

Holly pauses next to her, gazing up at a branch strangled by ivy. “No idea. This tree has been here since I was little… it’s why practically everybody in Appleonia takes the north road to and from town instead. I’ve only ever seen it once before. And not this close. It feels… _off,_ doesn’t it?”

That’s another question gnawing at Beatrice… but it can wait until after Holly finishes her tale of The Wanderer.

Holly hasn’t budged from her spot when Beatrice hops up and snaps off a twig as long as her forearm from a low-slung bough. Slick blackness beads at the cracked end and scabs, and the horse-girl muffles a gurgle of repulsion in the midst of her nervous rambling. 

“I think we’ll be forgiven if we only take a few pieces at a time. Right?” Beatrice directs the last word at the Edelwood, as though it can hear her. There are whorls and broken lines in its facade that remind her of scribbled writing—notes of the mad, chiseled frantically across the trunk. One such section almost looks fresh; it’s a suggestion of a symbol… but it’s so clotted with congealed oil that Beatrice can’t decide if the markings were purposeful or simply a form of Edelwood blight, or an uncanny optical illusion.

In the corner of her eye, Holly is drooping from queasiness. “It’s n-not like we’re cutting it down…” 

Beatrice opens the lantern’s window, feeds the puny stick inside—and yelps when the ailing fire lashes outward and ferociously consumes its meal. The wood crackles violently in an instant of electric-yellow sparks that needle her hand… and it’s gone, without a cinder remaining. 

Holly sprang away from the orange tongue of flame and creeps warily back to her post, hugging herself. “W-wow. Did that work?”

To Beatrice’s horrified disbelief, the twig did _nothing_ to brighten the lantern’s glow—the only difference is the captive soul’s restless stirring, the tantrum-sparks it spits into the air and the charcoal fumes it expires. How many _full trees_ had the Woodsman needed to grind to oil? How much oil was enough? She’d known that The Beast's core fed on massive amounts of energy to sustain itself, yet it dawns on her more and more the _labor_ necessary to sate him, the sheer _waste..._ Disappointment sours on her tongue. “Th-that wasn’t enough. It didn’t get any better.”

“Oh. We’ll give it more,” Holly says, timorously determined. She harvests another twig as if it will sting her and places it in the Dark Lantern too—flinching when the oil sizzles. At Beatrice’s assessing stare, she averts her eyes. “Wh-what?”

“Why are you helping me do this?”

Holly coughs uncomfortably and studies the mulch at her feet, the worming grooves of the Edelwood’s bark. “You were so frantic to keep it lit… I thought bringing you here would make you feel better.”

“You asked if this belonged to The Wanderer,” Beatrice prods. “You recognized it as The Beast’s, and you asked me that anyway. Why aren’t you admitting that they’re the same?”

The girls stand tensely with the lantern between them and the Edelwood beside. When it takes too long for Holly to talk, Beatrice shrugs and cracks a thicker piece of tinder from a different branch. “So… you _do_ know who he is. That’s why you’re helping me. Not because you feel sorry for the poor sick nutcase or whatever.” Her jaw aches. The wood she crams into the fire disappears as if the lantern is bottomless. “You know there are consequences if this fire goes out. You don’t want that monster to punish you.”

“Stop calling him that,” Holly beseeches. A pout molds her defensive frown and she touches Beatrice’s shoulder to make the resentful young woman face her. “You promised to listen. I’m not done with my story.”

What’s the point, if Beatrice knows how it ends? Does a bargain justify a loved one’s death? Does she really care what happened after Holly met The Beast, when Appleonia’s “happy ending” won’t undo what happened to Greg?

_Let that Holly girl have the lantern. She’ll take care of me._

“I’m listening.” Beatrice anchors one boot on the Edelwood’s trunk and prys off a sickly branch that spatters her arm with obsidian. “Tell me why we’re feeding The Beast’s Dark Lantern if he and The Wanderer are _nothing_ alike.”

Holly nods, steeling herself. “He could have taken me,” she says gingerly, “but he didn’t.”

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

“Holly Mae Hotchkiss,” admonished the old woman with oxygen she could not spare, in a threadbare voice that was half brittle bark and frost-silvered leaf. “Simmer down.”

The Beast had seen far worse in his role as Gravedigger. He’d be spat on. Clawed at. He’d been abused by the dying while he whittled down the rest of their tattered will and blinked as they cursed him, and made them Edelwood all the same. It didn’t matter to him whether the girl swore or begged. 

She got on her knees anyway, level with her grandmother—oblivious to how the searching roots found her legs and tested, tasted, hesitated to extend when they were preoccupied with transforming the elder’s bones to wood. “I’ll do anything,” the girl implored. She grasped the moth-eaten hem of his cloak and stained the fabric with her tears. “Anything! We can’t lose her, she’s…” Hiccups interrupted whatever she tried to verbalize, not that there were any words that could describe how much this person meant to her, how much the old woman probably meant to many in this unfortunate town. “ _Please_ let her go! Please, please, _please.”_

“I… can’t.” His tone hooked on a splinter in his Adam’s apple. The answer struck the girl dumb, and he knew why: it suggested that he would _try_ to release a hopeless soul, if he could. He thought accidentally revealing his powerlessness this way would make her hate him worse. He braced for the cursing.

“Beast,” sighed the grandmother. Her heartbeat was slowing, slowing… “Your song doesn’t sound like it used to. Why haven’t you brought your lantern to shed light on my leaves?”

The girl dropped his cloak; it swished and settled around him, indistinguishable from that of the first Beast under that obscuring shadow. He saw the fighting spirit leave her stare, noted the dip of her shoulders when she accepted that she was appealing to the wrong entity. Like the old woman, she hung over the pit of starvation. Her skin was paper stretched over angles and ribs. She and her grandmother were akin to the man that The Beast buried at Red Haven's entry gate, the two little boys he buried five miles outside Abington, the farmer with his dead mule and the lost travelers who never got to Oak Creek, and he didn’t want to bury these ladies _here_ with shelter in plain view (their house, the little yellow one) but the Unknown already...

“I’m sorry,” the-boy-who-was-a-Beast whispered. “I can’t save you. I can’t help you.” The scorching white in his eyesockets deepened to the blue of winter shade. Ashamed. Inevitable. 

“Why, Beast,” the grandmother tutted at his poorly stifled sobs. Her noble eyes were drifting closed. “You’re not like you used to be. Sit awhile… and keep us company.”

The girl whimpered, the tiniest saddest noise, but she did not attempt to drive The Beast away as he expected when he haltingly, timidly hunkered into the snow. She and he sat on either side of the elder and faced the white-capped town. Together. 

“You’re just g-going to let her die...?” Anger could not find purchase in the girl's frigid grief, her severely malnourished body. Her head rested on her grandmother's shoulder, wood grain imprinting grooves on her equine cheek. She’d faint before she reached her house to warn anyone that might help her. If she’d screamed for help earlier, no one had heard. He’d been her last hope.

“Yes,” answered The Beast.

“We’re almost home,” she repeated thickly. 

“I know.”

Pale violet changed to blush-pink on the horizon. The girl would lose her fingers and toes to the ruthless cold if she did not get to shelter. The Beast doubted he could say anything that would move her from her grandmother’s side—which is perhaps why the nearly sleeping elder spoke up once more, wizened frame cradled in quietly creaking bark.

“Nothing can be done for me,” the old woman said, at peace. She turned her chilled palm upward, wrist supported by the base of a forming branch, and The Beast acknowledged the invitation to take her hand without thought. “I am not afraid to die… but you can help my granddaughter. Promise me, Beast, that you’ll… look after my beautiful girl. Be kind to this town. Promise not to grow any more Edelwood here... and I’ll make the best Edelwood you’ve ever seen.”

The Beast could have refused. The elder was his, regardless. The right lines, the right lyrics sung from his most primal impulses, and her granddaughter would surrender as well. Their graves would serve as beacons of his reign.

Except no victim had ever asked him to show mercy to someone else. They’d never welcomed the Edelwood or his presence, as if he were a relief. The notion that he can make a peaceful grave, not one of suffering, thaws The Beast until his innards are warm and tender as a bruise. 

He promises, and holds the old woman’s hand until it becomes a branch. He promises, and banishes the uncertain roots that no longer have claim on her granddaughter. He promises, and half-carries the limp, bawling girl downhill, through the orchard, and to her little yellow house, whose occupants are too sick or weak to stir.

“Leave a plate outside your back door,” The Beast says, each syllable rough from the tears he'd trapped in his chest. “I will bring you food. I’ll bring food to anyone who needs it, as long as they don’t look for me. I don’t want anyone to see. No one can know that I…” The unfeeling armor he'd constructed was shards inside him, cutting up the rawness, and it hurt so much he wanted to hide in the orchard and scream.

The girl stared at him blankly. In shock, he reasoned. She’d been spared by the Unknown’s pitiless Undertaker and witnessed him bury her grandmother in the same day, after all. “Wh-where will you go after? Will… will you keep your promise?”

More Edelwood to tend. Sacrifices scraping at him, despair a noose looped about his neck… “I wander, but I will return,” The Beast told her, fighting compulsions that tore more brutally with each moment he ignored them. “You have my word… for whatever that word is worth.”

When he fled into the forest, sunrise banished the dreary grey from Appleonia and lit the snow clean and sparkling. The grandmother’s Edelwood stretched its boughs to the pearl-blue firmament as if waking up from a restful slumber.  
Modest thumbprints of green sprinkled the apple trees closest to Holly’s home. Through a family’s mourning for their matriarch and their bittersweet celebration for their daughter’s return, The orchard started to bud.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

They pull every twig in range and lay it in the lantern, one at a time, and listen to the flame hiss as it burns. Holly keeps sneaking peeks at Beatrice over the flaxen firelight, bracing for Beatrice to challenge an aspect of her tale. Animosity thrums from Beatrice like the primed spring of a bear trap.

Eventually, they run out of easy tinder. Holly and Beatrice sit down in the deadfall, pretending they aren’t tired, backs turned to the gruesome Edelwood. Beatrice holds the Dark Lantern in her lap and critically ponders whether the flame within has improved its luminosity or color. 

“Well,” Holly ventures, surreptitiously wiping oil from her hands onto the carpet of dessicated leaves, “that’s the story of the orchard Edelwood, my grandmother. And the, ah, b-bargain with The Wanderer. He’s taken his promise _super_ seriously… there are always apples in the orchard, and any Appleonian who gets lost in the woods always finds their way back home. We’re safe and happy, as long as my grandmother’s tree stands. Does… does that answer your question?”

A critical beat. “...He took your grandmother after you begged him not to, and you act as if he’s a hero.” Beatrice’s voice quivers, though her posture is rigid as granite. “You gave him a new name because he did something nice for your town, which he only did because he felt _bad._ ”

“The real Beast would have taken us _both,_ ” Holly shoots back crossly, also at the end of her patience. “Even Grandma Opal said he was different. I don’t think The Wanderer turned her into an Edelwood at all—I think that was going to happen just ‘cause she was _dying,_ and he did his best to offer comfort to her and me, so…” Emotion muddies her syllables and she drops her face into her hands to hide her sudden tears. 

Chagrined, Beatrice awkwardly rubs the horse-girl’s shuddering back. The tragedy is that Holly is right: this Beast _isn’t_ the same one that terrorized the Unknown throughout all of history. But her devotion is so misguided, so backward, so _blind,_ that convincing her of the truth seems more impossible than reversing the direction of the sunset.

“I don’t know _why_ The Wanderer is different,” Holly blubbers between hitches of her diaphragm, “but he _is,_ he’s very kind and gentle and I wish you didn’t h-h-hate him so much!” 

Beatrice bridles, lifting her hand off Holly’s shoulders. “Kind?” she spits. “We’re not arguing about who owns this cursed lantern anymore, are we? Whatever you call him, he traps people in trees. He lives off oil that comes from the dead. That can’t be forgiven.”

Holly blows her nose on a handkerchief stuffed up one sleeve. She tilts her head and her watery eyes capture the lantern’s honey-gold as she squints at Beatrice. “L...lives off…?”

A lightning bolt of pure horror strikes Beatrice through the heart. No… _no!_ Why had she said that?! People know The Beast uses Edelwood oil to fuel the Dark Lantern—but they don’t know WHY, they don’t realize what’s LITERALLY inside of it, Holly might’ve believed it was a holy symbol or a weapon or some beacon for the lost and dying but she’s studying Beatrice and the lantern with an expression of mounting turbulence, and _damn,_ what the hell does Beatrice say—

“What did you mean by that?” Holly continues. “I was always taught… they say it’s the light of the spirits The Beast has reaped. When The Wanderer came to us without it…” She peers over her shoulder at the Edelwood. “He never said the lantern was his. When I asked you if it belonged to him, I thought maybe he’d rescued it from the old Beast or something. He wouldn’t want those souls in that demon’s hands. He w-wouldn’t want them to… to burn out. What’s this about _living off—_ ”

“If I don’t give it oil, he’ll starve to death,” Beatrice spills. Her pulse is a rapid woodpecker rattle in her eardrums. She can’t take it back so she hurtles forward, both hands clasping the lantern’s handle. This is her opportunity to convince Holly, to incinerate the veil Holly has draped between Wanderer and Beast—to free Appleonia from his power. 

“St- _starve?!_ How—”

“You’re right, Holly, he’s not the real Beast. Er—he _is,_ but he isn’t the original one. He’s the _new_ one. That’s why he didn’t have the lantern when you met him, why you’ve never seen him with it before. A woodsman was carrying it for him—”

“Why?”

“—because _he can’t be trusted,_ all right? I’ve _seen_ what he can do—HIM, not the old Beast. _Him._ Do you seriously think he gives everyone the same respectful burial he gave your grandmother? Do think I could have stolen _this,_ ” Beatrice asks, shaking the lantern, “and not tell the difference between the old Beast and The Beast I stole it from? The _Wanderer_ is a manipulative little shit. Burning Edelwood keeps him alive. If this flame dies, so does he. That creature is a lying, scheming _parasite,_ and he’s played this whole town. Including you.” 

_Including me._

Crickets sing. Frogs croak. An owl’s sinister screech scratches the canopy. Holly looks as if Beatrice backhanded her across the face. “No,” the filly mutters. “No, that’s not…”

“The boys I mentioned? The ones I was looking for? He killed them. He turned the youngest into an Edelwood, and there was no pretty _bargain_ to make up for it. I was this Beast’s friend too, whether you believe me or not, and he betrayed me and that sweet little kid anyway. I loved him first. _That’s_ why I hate him. Aren’t I _allowed_ to hate him?!”

Tremors wrack Beatrice from head to toe. She wants Holly to hurt as much as she does. She wants someone else to share the strain of disenchantment, of bitterness, so she isn’t completely alone. 

Empathy overflows from Holly’s gaze. She could deny Beatrice, denounce her, leave her in the woods with The Beast’s burden and her aimless anger—but she scoops her into an unexpected embrace instead. Beatrice is too stunned to escape. 

“Were you with him, when it happened?” Holly whimpers. “That little boy?”

“No, I...” No, she wasn’t. She’d failed to protect Greg. She hadn’t gotten the chance to say goodbye, or see his Edelwood tomb. Her fingernails dig into the fabric of Holly’s sleeves. 

“That’s why The Wanderer asked for you,” Holly weeps. “He wanted to apologize. Oh, Beatrice, he looked so sorry when I found him—”

“Apologize?!” roars Beatrice. She shoves Holly—threat of appleseeds be damned—and positively _smolders_ with rage. “You—you— _you stupid horse!_ He was mocking me, which _you_ —” she pushes Holly again, harder— “would have seen if you’d GONE IN WITH ME! You want to know why the lantern is _my_ problem? He gets some sick enjoyment from making me burn up souls for him. That’s all it is. The Beast before him did the same damn thing to the Lantern-Bearer before me, and that _scrawny weasel…_ ” 

Holly’s eyes are perfectly wide, swimming marbles. She can’t tell which way is up or down. Her mouth opens, shuts, opens, unable to speak her incomprehensible confusion. “Then… why don’t you kill him?”

“Excuse me?”

“If you hate him so much… if he’s truly this disgusting, selfish monster… why don’t you starve him? Why don’t you let him die?” Holly makes a face as if she’s speaking vulgarity, vexed at her own audacious, traitorous questions. 

Frustration kindles Beatrice’s skin. She can’t answer. _Because I don’t know what will happen,_ is her initial thought. _Because I’m scared._

Holly’s questions gain momentum as she reins her hiccups under control. There is no accusatory sharpness under her tone—the Appleonian is genuinely perplexed, desperate to understand. “He… you said The Wanderer uses _that_ to eat.” She points vaguely to the lantern, not looking at it directly, as if to do so is inappropriately intimate. “Why would he give something that important to someone he’s wronged?”

“He didn’t _give_ it to me. I _stole_ it from him, and he let me keep it,” Beatrice grumbles hotly… and then pauses. The Beast could’ve reclaimed his source of power and greatest vulnerability in the barn. He could’ve given the lantern to Holly, if all he wanted was a devoted mule to do the labor of fueling the lantern for him. Beatrice had _known_ in her gut there was something perverse about his needless ridicule, his performative indifference… but she’d been cornered, and angry, and ran for town instead of solving his scheme. 

She’d assumed, ever since the cabin, that the sole reason he let her carry his soul was to torment her. But he could torment her without ever allowing the lantern to pass her hands.

“Beatrice? Are you going to faint?” Holly knows better now than to touch the unpredictable redhead, though she appears as if she strongly wants to check Beatrice’s temperature. 

“I’m alright,” Beatrice lies. Her stomach is somersaulting and her lungs feel flat as leaves. She’s going to puke. “How far are we from the barn?”

“Um… three miles? M-maybe less?”

Her vision is greying out, yet Beatrice isn’t burning up. Her palms, her face, are over-cool and damp-clammy. “He’s here,” she blurts, icecubes tracing down her spine. Her shout ricochets off the trees. “Come out you freaking voyeur!” 

Nothing. Holly chews her bottom lip. “I… don’t think he followed us, Beatrice. You must’ve seen how unwell he was.”

Unwell? The Beast had been bored and dismissive, lounging because he didn’t _want_ to move, not because he _couldn’t_ move. His loathing for her matches hers for him. The Dark Lantern is a punishment. It _has_ to be—that’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Otherwise he would have taken it from her, or dumped it on someone else, or hidden it... 

“Obviously he’s hiding like a coward,” Beatrice snarls. She stands and spins, splashing the forest with topaz. “He wants to make me look psychotic, to undermine me—”

“I’d say running through the streets shouting ‘Beast’ did that for you already,” muses Holly, without meanness.

“I’m only healthy if he’s nearby,” Beatrice insists hysterically. “I’m chained to him and he _tortures me_ and thinks it’s so flipping hilarious, ha-ha, dumb bluebird flying in circles!”

The Beast had stalked her, unseen, as she traveled to Appleonia. She imagines him spread among the apple trees while she was at the Golden Delicious Inn, spying on her from afar. And then… then Beatrice had been thrown in jail, and he’d yanked her chain to its breaking point for who knows why, slithering who knows where as she suffered. Holly had called The Wanderer and brought him the lantern, and he’d returned to the town… he’d waited in the barn, so that Beatrice’s fever subsided once she came close enough... 

“Beatrice,” Holly murmurs, glancing around the woods and revolving her ears. “I don’t think he’s here. Why would he conceal himself? We know who he is. There’s no mystery to uphold.”

“Don’t you dare argue with me like I’m insane. I know how my own curse works.”

“I’m not suggesting that you’re insane… maybe the curse rules are different than you thought? Or he un-cursed you? We _did_ f-feed…” the horse-girl can’t finish the ghastly sentence. 

“Un-cursed,” Beatrice laughs acridly. “Whatever would he do that for? It’s the best way to control me.” Days of meandering the Unknown, delirious, had shown her that. Her tether is what makes her an _excellent_ candidate for Lantern-Bearer. Unlike the Woodsman, Beatrice can be brought to heel in a second.

So why hadn’t The Beast activated the curse and forced her to chop Edelwood immediately? Why had he waited until tonight? Why had he whipped her with fever after she’d lost the lantern in jail, but not after she escaped the barn to expose him to the Appleonians?

It’s not the sadistic nature of The Beast that jams icicles into her chest. It’s the striking, stomach-turning possibility that Beatrice has missed something _huge._

The implications nearly drop her to her knees. She runs for the overgrown path instead, toting the lantern and too bewildered to determine if the wetness on her face is tears or the tentative mist of nighttime rain; she ignores Holly calling and jogging after her, begging her not to be left alone in the haunted woods; she sees only the forest path combing itself from hosta and lungwort and mayapple, the roof of the barn sloping past the canopy’s silhouette. 

Neither Beatrice nor Holly are there when a dreadful, dark-plumed owl wings into the nameless Edelwood’s crest, and casts its pale-moon glare on Appleonia.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Holly’s family must have believed her tale, because there was a dinner plate at their back door the night The Beast returned. He piled it with all the winter foraging he could find and left without anyone spotting him. He was still too tender to face their fury, their fresh sadness. 

He wouldn’t have been able to handle their undeserved appreciation, either.

After the Hotchkiss family was fed, word spread like leaf-buds on a bough through the town. People noticed the trees gasping awake while snow yet quashed the earth. They visited the grand Edelwood on the hill to pay their respects. Curious, hopeful, desperate folk left plates at their back doors and shut their curtains at sunset… and at dawn, although their breath was fog and their joints complained and frost silvered their windows, they had a meal of winter vegetables to fill their caving stomachs.

Not everyone tried this trick. They did not need to. Generous neighbors made stew, made casserole, and shared with whomever knocked on their doors. Smoke from chimneys carried notes of herbaceous roasts. The orchard grew green. It flowered.

Citizens who’d been too feeble or frightened to leave their homes ventured into the forest. If they were lost searching for food, or went to rescue someone trapped by the season’s austere vice, they always managed to make it back to town. Always. 

The Beast visited Appleonia less and less, as his direct attendance was no longer required. The Unknown remembered the desires of its ruler, and enacted his will unconsciously. The obligations of his promise had been—and were being—fulfilled. He’d looked after Holly, and brought her home. He’d showered kindness on the town, in his own shy and secretive fashion. The _intentions_ of the bargain between him and the orchard Edelwood were open enough to evolve as the town itself established its own role in the agreement—a garden that thrived even without its gardener constantly there to tend it. _Don’t look for the spirit who looks after us. Leave him be. Treat each other the way you wish to be treated._

They named him The Wanderer, and joined a small yet building number of people who harbored affection for this new Beast, not fear. He became a symbol of hope. Appleonia was _his._

It is still his, although Wirt fails to understand why. He remembers the day he sat with an old woman and made her an Edelwood while her granddaughter wept. He remembers staring at that little yellow house, all the details he could see of it, and knowing he could not excise the roots from his victim to carry her to that house himself. He shivers in his nest of hay in the barn and wonders why Holly always greets him with wide-eyed excitement, when he wouldn’t fight back if she hit him.

He wonders, too, how Holly tells the story. And if she’s told her story to Beatrice yet.

Suspense is insects buzzing in his stomach. Wirt hopes Beatrice shut down any attempt Holly made to show him in a better light. Enmity will free Beatrice from him, will keep her distant and safe from any other ways he could make her miserable, and maybe after Beatrice has realized she’s in a town of Beast-worshippers she’ll finally go home. She’ll guard the lantern from him, her key to freedom, and Wirt will only haunt the mill to drop off Edelwood for fuel. She won’t ever have to roam the Unknown alone, like the Woodsman.

Time drags in the barn. Wirt prepares himself for curious Appleonians to check on him, overstepping the “rules” of the bargain to witness The Wanderer for themselves. He listens for the stomp of Beatrice’s boots returning to abraid him for his mass deceit. Because his soul is so close, he feels a voltaic surge of LIFE burning in the Dark Lantern—oil? Is this what it feels like to be fed?—and then it’s gone, wringing him out like a violent sugar crash. His body sinks deeper into the hay. He breathes shallow, fast, and clutches his talons over his stomach. Injuries that haven’t properly healed ripple with pain. Had he imagined that? He’s so tired, sluggish, pathetic, he should have stayed asleep but Beatrice needed him, the lantern…

He blacks out. And he knows that he’s blacked out, because one second he is alone, and the next Beatrice is standing at the foundation of his hay bed and bellowing his name, her profile limned by fire.

_“WIRT!”_

Not “Beast.” _Wirt._

Oh, no.

He opens his eyes and it is like lifting lead. He sits up, and it is hauling a mountain off his torso. The shredded parts of his flesh seep and scream. “I grow bored of you, Bͪl̐u̓e̳b̈i̇r͐d̓.” Running a marathon would be less agonizing that the exertion he must pour into this performance. “Don’t you have ä ne͕s̉t̹ ͔toͥ ̹f̠l̽y͐ ̀ba͕c̦kͅ ̼ṱo͍?”

She smiles at him—a threat display of bared teeth and murderously narrowed hazel eyes. “Not until we’ve had a proper conversation, _Wanderer._ ” Her fake Appleonian accent is a bludgeon to his head, sweet like boiling sugar scalding skin. He pales under his shadows. “What’s that you were saying earlier about an ‘out’? What the hell was that about?”

“It’s like I said,” Wirt answers, his pretense hectically treading the surface. He shambles together a paltry facsimile of a snarl. “You cͫa͐n̽’t ha͔ṉdl̜e͇ ͐i͎t̾—”

“Bullshit.”

Wirt panics at her staggering deadpan. He writhes and squirms to reach the dirt to dive in and escape—

Beatrice lunges for his legs. She drops the Dark Lantern in her scramble and tackles the lower half of his body, pinning his hooves together. Wirt keens and instinctively curls into himself to protect his pulverized center, his cracked ribs and split flesh. “L̞e̲ṭ ̤m͍eͤ ́gͮo͆, w͕ḫȯ ̞d͆o ͬyͤo̺u t͐hi̬nk̦—”

“Punish me, Wanderer,” Beatrice jeers. “Come on, fight back. Use those claws. _Fight me._ ”

“S̍t͓ỏp̥—”

“No.”

She’s figured him out. She’s seen through the ruse. All his planning, his blood sweat and tears, a meaningless waste. Wirt needed this to go right, he needed _one single thing_ to work out for once… 

“I’m not walking out of this barn until I get the truth. And if you want me to keep fueling _that,_ ” Beatrice tilts her head toward the toppled lantern, which projects a halo into the barn’s rafters, “you’ll start talking. Now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus Track: "Limit to Your Love" by James Blake, "Drop the Game" by Flume and Nick Murphy.
> 
> Thank you as always for your patience and encouragement (｡♥‿♥｡)


End file.
